Customized Schooling aims to reorient discussions about school reform by moving away from “whole school” solutions to customized services and products.

While the best-known entrepreneurial efforts have sought to fix problems at a schoolwide level, this volume looks at “how providers might use new tools to deliver or customize services that do not conform to conventional [school] policies or structures.”

The book surveys the current landscape of customized entrepreneurial activity in education, looks closely at particular customized innovations by schools and education entrepreneurs, and addresses persistent concerns that arise in connection with customized reforms. Overall, the book aims to spur fresh thought about the scope and nature of promising education reforms and to open up strikingly new possibilities for entrepreneurial activity in today’s schools.

Customized Schooling is a volume in the Educational Innovations series.

Praise

Customized Schooling dares the reader to look at what schooling could be like if we end our reliance on the one-stop-shop schoolhouse. Alongside a score of policy leaders, esteemed researchers, and on-the-ground practitioners, Hess and Manno lay out the case for individualizing education so that student, teacher, and district demands are heard and followed. What are the contours of such a system? How will it handle financial, data, and accountability concerns? And how will we listen more effectively to the wants of education customers? This volume provides fuel for the crucial discussion of these and other questions.
— Clayton M. Christensen, Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Rick Hess and Bruno Manno argue that contemporary education is ‘an anachronism in today’s world of specialized services.’ The book persuasively puts forth a strong rationale for abandoning past practices and provides a compendium of cutting-edge innovations and innovators. Do not put this book aside; read it again and again. Customized Schooling is an essential book for those of us committed to the transformation of learning in the United States.
— Gene Wilhoit, executive director, Council of Chief State School Officers